Control Freak
++ Ibex ++ Nestled to the right of the Magnanese Mountain range and occupying a wide, flat plain, the city of Ibex is host to a major portion of Cybertron's transportation centers. Used in ancient times to launch the long lost Ark-1, Ibex is still home to the Central Spaceport, which runs shuttles from Cybertron to some of its orbital stations and satellites, such as the Messatine mining station, the lunar penitentury of Garrus-1. Transportation hubs and development centers have sprung up all around the space port, along with long stretches of test roads and airfields, where bleeding-edge vehicle designs are researched and developed. The primary colors of the area are white, silver and pale blue, with dull gray roads and black and yellow hazard stripes interdispersed among working areas. Hangars, spaceports, bullet-shaped buildings and domes are the primary forms of archtecture. The Velocitronian Embassy is naturally located here, close to the Speedia - the planet's most expansive and famous racetrack, home to the Ibex Cup competition. The Ibex Center for Athletic Medicine is here, where speeder frames are maintained, honed and developed, pit crews are trained, and specialized fuel types are developed. Cybertron's most elite club, The Circle, is located a short distance away from the Speedia. Though the planetary races have been cancelled and space travel restrained, enterprizing (or bold) individuals have managed to gain access to locked down facilities, taking advantage of the empty tracks and abandoned crew stations for illegal races and illegal upgrading. Blurr's been hanging around his habsuite in Ibex for the most part, and he's been busy as ever. The races are due to resume in just a couple of megacycles, and plus there were exhibition races just to keep the audience engaged and excited for the tournaments to resume. So Feint might have been finding herself alone at the apartment most of the time, though Blurr has reassured her that there are plenty of toys to play with. Still, this time around, it's been more than a couple of solar cycles, and Blurr hasn't come home. Typically if he is going to be gone for a while, maybe making a trip to one of his other residences, he would have told her so. But not this time. She hasn't heard from him for some time, and he hasn't been answering his hailing frequency...has something gone wrong? Toys may be fine for Blurr, but Feint is not interested in them; she is concerned with his lack of contact. Worried about him, she decides to do something she has never done before: Fly freely. Her altmode is not particularly large; in fact, the aerial drone mode she assumes is small enough that it could be carried in arms by the average size Cybertronian. It's one of the reasons she was assigned to the mines rather than Vos. Small aircraft need not apply for the planetary airforce. Unsteadily hovering out of the window from their Translucentia apartment, she overcomes initial clumsiness in flight quickly, taking to the air as if forged for it (seeing as how she -was-). Her sensors begin to probe around, long distance, seeking for any traces of Blurr's unique spark signature, headed first to Ibex and the race tracks, where he would more than likely be. She guessed right, Blurr's spark signature would lead her to Ibex, where he is usually working. The tracks are empty tonight, but Feint's sensors would have Blurr still at the IAA's main office complex, somewhere on one of the subbasement levels... Feint wants to know what's going on, but she's wary. Blurr may still act a bit childish but she's doing the growing up for the both of them. Landing outside the building, she makes herself invisible - by using her abilities to make others ignore her. Taking advantage of being 'invisible', she follows behind a team of technicians heading inside the building. The technicians move in through the main entry. Inside is a massive and beautiful atrium, with a giant sculpture of the Ibex Cup surrounded by fancy holographic designs that dance across its surface. Most of them get into an elevator going to an upper floor, but one of them, a slight and timid-looking mech, lingers behind and waits for a different elevator... An elevator that goes -down-. Feint can sense Blurr is down there, and she is no stranger to being underground. She moves quickly to attempt to follow the timid looking mech down. The elevator doors open, and he steps in. It isn't too difficult for her to follow him inside, since he isn't aware she's there. He looks...rather miserable. As if he's trapped in some kind of world of horrors that he could never hope to get out of. He punches in an access code, and a scan starts up, sweeping over his face and then announcing that access has been granted. Down, down, the elevator goes, until the doors finally open again, and the technician moves out into a darkened corridor that looks quite barren compared to the flamboyant atrium. Yes...she can feel it. Blurr is definitely down here, the signal is growing stronger and stronger. Taking pity on the poor mech, Feint pushes just a few seconds of soothing ease on him, a sense of hope, that, despite how bad things are here, there is a chance it will get better. It lasts only as long as a stray thought, but Feint hopes that it will be of some good to the mech. She follows along behind, searching for Blurr; she'll break away from the mech and head straight to Blurr's spark if he is not going the same way. The mech's face relaxes slightly at the fleeting thought, but it isn't enough to really make much of a difference, and he goes back to looking miserable again. He moves down the corridor a slight distance, then takes a right that takes him down a different, narrower hallway at the end of which is a pair of double doors leading into what looks like some sort of operating room. Feint need not break away, he is going exactly where Blurr's spark signature seems to be coming from. There are several other sparks inside the room, along with Blurr's... The fact that it's an operating room gives Feint pause. Her disguise is almost broken due to a flicker of worry, a sinking feeling in her spark. She qyickly tries to pull herself back together again as she tries to look through the doors to see what's going on inside. Given Feint's extraordinary sensors, she has no problem looking right through the doors to see what exactly is going on inside. Blurr is clamped to a T-shaped device of some sort, with several interface cables attached to the back of his head. He also has a -hole- in his lower torso, and oh, the fuel and energon that is everywhere. He appears to be conscious, but weakened, a look of defeat on his face. The technician who has just walked in moves over to a terminal near the device, and starts inputting commands. On the display a progress bar can be seen, along with a host of other code that likely wouldn't be recognizable to anyone not an expert in the area of programming. But, the bar reads: DATAFILE COMPRESSION LEVEL 89%..... The other mechs in the room include a couple of security guards, medics who appear to be working on fixing up that hole, and a tall, winged blue mech who appears quite like a Senator in his armor style but lacks the golden Senate sigil. He seems to be overseeing this operation, and is busy directing the various workers and drones that are bustling about. Unlike Blurr, Feint is not the type to rush in and interrupt a surgical proceedure. Instead, still standing outside, she attempts to sensor-sweep the area, hoping to pick up any sign of body language, and to gain an idea of how badly Blurr has been hurt. She herself is now a big ball of worry. She has to hold herself back from rushing in to comfort and console him. Blurr has been hurt pretty badly, that much becomes clear. He's been shot through the torso, and he's lost a lot of fuel. A medic is carefully trying to reconnect some intricate circuitry inside the massive wound. "Slag, he got shot up bad." He is saying. "I...think he'll make it, though. It's kind of amazing he survived this, he was leaking out for a while." Of course, they don't know about Shiftlock's "gift" to him. Feint covers her mouth with her hands. So that's why he didn't come back. She resolves that she'll have to stay close to him. This was simply too close a call for her liking; she doesn't want to lose the love of her life now that she's only just found him! She moves out of the way of the door, transforming into the aerodrone once more. Hovering upside down near the ceiling, she magnetically locks herself in place and continues to listen in and observe, waiting for Blurr's repairs to be complete before she makes her move. "Any idea who did it?" One of the other medics asks, handing the one operating a spare part. "Not sure, guess they never caught a glimpse of the shooter. But maybe Blurr will still remember it once we're done here." He glances over at the tech she had followed in here, who is still standing at that terminal. "What do you say, Doubletap? Think you can pick that out?" Doubletap shrugs. He's shaking slightly. He's been shaking the entire time. "I...I don't know. I'll try." The mech cringes, as if he hates what he's about to do. Turning his optics away, he taps a final key, and the progress bar moves forward. DATAFILE COMPRESSION LEVEL 92%...95%...99%... Blurr suddenly tenses in the restraints, optics widening as if he's about to scream, but somehow he doesn't. Still, Feint can sense the pain written on his face. Doubletap turns his face away, looking ashamed and distraught. He can't even look at him... Feint does the only thing she can do: She attempts to override Blurr's senses and cause him to immediately go into recharge mode - to make him sleep, and push the pain out of his systems. Immediately after - and while she's still hiding outside the room - her voice is audible in the operating room (to all but Blurr anyways). <"What is the purpose of this?> The monitor equipment starts to make beeping noises when Feint attempts to push Blurr into recharge mode, and Doubletap looks back to the console, looking confused. "What the slag..." He mutters. Blurr seems to have suddenly passed out, he wasn't supposed to just pass out like that... "A-axle? Sir..." He turns to the winged supervisor. "I don't know what happened, but--" Axle stands up, frowning, but then Feint's voice is suddenly heard in the room. He glares about, searching for whoever is speaking. "Who's there?" he demands. "Show yourself immediately!" The security mechs immediately take up defensive stances, their weapons locked, loaded, and ready to fire upon any intruder. <"You don't -want- me to show myself. If I show myself you're going to need that equipment to erase your own memories,"> Feint's voice says clearly and firmly. <"What are you doing to him and why. I want answers. Now. I won't ask a second time."> The tiny little aerodrone is still sitting outside the operating room, in the corner of the ceiling, locked in and running silent. Axle gestures angrily at the secruity mechs to search the hallways outside. Doubletap just cowers in a corner. The medics are just...standing there, frozen with terror, their hands shaking. "It's none of your -business-, whoever you are! This is IAA property, what we do here, to him, is within our jurisdiction. -My- jurisdiction! I'll have you know that this area is off-limits to unauthorized persons. You will be caught, and you -will- be apprehended accordingly." <" The mech on that table is important to me. I have a right to know why you are injuring his mind. If he is valuable to you, do you not even consider the destruction you're wreaking on his brain module? Is it well and truly your goal to have a lobotomized speeder? If you want something fast and mindless there are -transports- for that."> The aerodrone extends her field towards the security mechs, shunting a wave of raw, strut-clenching terror in their direction. "Do not propose to know more about this situation than I do." Axle shoots back. "-I- crafted his frame, created his programming, his very mind! I and my research team. I -know- what I'm -doing-." The security mechs cower and stagger backward. They're trained fighters, so they try to combat the fear, but they aren't exactly prepared to handle a situation like this one. <"You may have crafted it but you have not bein -inside- it. You're -destroying- him. /Is that what you want/?> The voice has gone from assertive to booming and threatening. Feint is getting angry with what she's beginning to uncover. She wants to be able to whisk Blurr away from all this, so that he never need suffer again, but until she understands what they want, she cannot hope to know how to fight them. "Don't be a fool. We've been using this procedure on him for..." Axle laughs unpleasantly. "Well, for his entire life, really! He will be just fine, we can't allow him to become -dissillusioned- with his position, now can we? We can't afford for him to turn into an emotional -mess- in front of our audiences!" he shakes his head. Well, that's part of it, anyway. "I don't care who you are, you can't -possibly- hope to understand this situation in its entirety. Which is precisely why it is -none- of your business." <"He's my -conjunx endura-, it is -every bit my business-!"> Feint demagnetizes from the ceiling, transforming and dropping down, and keeping herself blank in the vision of the security guards, pushes open the door to the operating room. Axle stares at her. Conjunx endura...the slag?? This...this wasn't good. "How did you get in here? Guards, end her!" he demands, but being unable to see her, they are confused. "Hmph! Who gave you the right to do such a thing? -I- made him, therefore, he belongs to -me-!" Growling, at the guards' failure to locate her, he draws a pistol himself. "Fine, you incompetent glitcheads, I suppose I'll have to deal with her -myself-!" And on the final word he fires. Feint turns partially out of the way but the shot catches her in the shoulder. She drops down and cries out, holding her injury, but she is well acquainted with working through pain from long years in Kaon. She immediately turns her wound into an advantage as she pushes the sensation right onto Axle, trying to make him feel the exact same pain in the exact same area - going so far as to includ even the appearance of the wound to the surgeon. "Blurr gave me that right, he's the one who chose me!" she shouts back. "How can you create someone and not -care- about what you are doing to them?! What kind of unmechanical monster are you!?" Axle cries out and grips his own shoulder as well...how was this happening? Wait...he glares at Feint. "You...you're an Outlier, aren't you? You belong in the -Institute-." He is about to advance further on her, but thinks better of it, and instead moves over to the terminal where Doubletap is standing, shoving the technician roughly aside. "You will leave this place now, and you will never speak of what you have witnessed here to anyone, ever. Otherwise, I will erase all memory of you from his mind." "Just /tell me what you're doing with him/," Feint insists, glowering at him, trying to make him listen and reason with her. "What are you trying to accomplish? You're causing him immense pain and suffering, and even -you- must realize that this is all going to be negative reinforcement that will come crashing back on you one day! There has got to be a way to get what you want -without- all this!" Axle's hand hovers over the controls. "I already told you, this is to keep him stable, to prevent him from becoming disillusioned, or depressed, regardless of what he may or may not have experienced. The races are to resume soon, and there is no way we can afford for him to have a nervous breakdown in front of everyone! And trust me, if there were another way, I would have made full use of it. Now get out of my sight, before I cut you out of his life." Feint may or may not notice that Doubletap, the technician she had followed in here, is standing behind Axle, shaking his head vigorously at her, as if to urge her not to give in to Axle's manipulation schemes, because regardless of whether she gives in to his demands, he is going to erase her from Blurr's memories unless someone stops him... "You didn't try love or compassion, did you," Feint accuses, standing slowly, holding her shoulder. "You stabilize someone with support - not control. If control worked, there would not be riots in Kaon." "/I/ am going to give /you/ a final warning. Stop trying to turn him into a drone, and let me show you a better way, one that will work, that will make everyone happy and successful - because once your hand touches those controls, may Primus have mercy on your spark, you will die -screaming-." Axle throws his head back and laughs. Clearly he doesn't have a full understanding of Feint's abilities. "Love and compassion? Ha! Only a laymech would speak in such vague terms. You think these things are so simple?! Oh, we'll just LOVE on him and cuddle him every cycle, then he'll be -all better-! You're just a naive idealist." he sneers. "You can't threaten -me-. This is -my- turf, and -you're- the trespasser, here." He keys a command, sending circuit speeders into Blurr's systems to wake him up. The speedster jerks awake, his optics wide with confusion and panic when he sees Feint there. What...is she doing here? But his face suddenly twists in agony as the process starts up again. DATAFILE COMPRESSION LEVEL 108%....109%... The drones that had been moving about on fetch quests for the medics suddenly change, panels shifting not unlike a transforming Cybertronian. Turrets emerge, and begin to open fire on Feint...can she fool -them- too? Feint leaps forward and embraces Blurr, taking a gamble that they aren't going to fire on her and risk taking out Axle's prize rooster as well. "Blurr, I love you and I need you stay focused on my voice. Don't look," she says, trying to bring her arms up and her wings around to prevent him from seeing what is going to erupt around him. She tries to pull the cables loose from the back of his head, protecting him with her body as the turrets fire. She reasons that dying to free him would be an acceptable end, should it come to that, and as she summons up all her strength, she begins to sing a slow, gentle, sad song, the kind the miners of Kaon have sung for millions of years, whose words are a wistful hope for two lovers to finally see the sunrise, together, above ground. For Axle, hell is coming. The sound of metallic crackling first fills his audials, drowning out every other sound and the flashes of light from the turrets are not as important as a single ravenous scraplet wanders across his optics, opening its razor-drill mouth and burrowing hungrily into the very lense-crystal of his optic. The illusion is intense and requiring Feint to focus on him and not the other medics; she pushes the hallucenation that thousands of scraplets are swarming around him, digging into his body, working their way deep beneath his mesh. The impulse is strong: the only way to stop them is to pull open the soft, rotting, aluminum-foil armor of his torso, and pull them all out before they get to his spark. "AAARGHHH!! GET THEM OFF! GET THEM OFF!" Feint's illusions send Axle into a screaming heap on the floor, ripping desperately away at his own armor...literally tearing himself apart in a desperate attempt to rid himself of the scraplets before they get to his spark... But unfortunately for Feint, she cannot conceal herself from the drones, for they have no mind to fool. Nor are they equipped to handle hostage situations. So they just open fire, guns blazing at the target that Axle had identified for them. However, as Axle lies writhing on the floor, the technicians spring into action. With the boss incapacitated, there is no way to stop the drones...while they are authorized to give simple commands, they aren't authorized to call off an attack or make them change modes. To do so would require hacking, and hacking takes time. So in that moment, Doubletap throws himself between Feint and the drones, putting his arms around her and letting the shots slam into his back instead of hers while one of the other technicians quickly hacks the drone network from the control console in the room. Fortunately, they are fairly simple devices, and simple for almost any engineer to find a way to override the primary mandate. But it still took time, and in that time, the shots would have overwhelmed the small aerodrone, if not for Doubletap. Finally, the drones stop firing, deactivating their defense protocols and going back to errand mode. Sadly enough, Doubletap is now full of holes, and he just...crumples to the floor, his body fading slowly to grey. Feint's only focus is on Blurr. Now that the cable is out, shielding him with her body, and Doubletap paying the price (and she will mourn him later, if she survives), she cups the side of his face. The little blue and black femme, riddled with bullets, tries to make herself smile through the pain. "I'm sorry, I just came to find you. They were trying to crush your memories again. I didn't know what else to do..." The medics hurry over to Doubletap, but shake their heads sadly, seeing that he is already dead. Strangely enough, they don't seem quite as concerned about Axle, who has finally stopped thrashing once he's ripped his own spark casing out, and now lies still in a large pool of his own energon. One of them does come over to Feint, and examines her wounds. "H-hey...you okay? I mean, I know how this looks, but..." He's not really sure what else to say; he's just hoping that she doesn't think they're all monsters, too. As for Blurr, to say he is a mess would be putting it lightly. Axle had been in the process of attempting to force-compress all memory of Feint when she'd unleashed that horrific hallucination on him and pulled the cables manually, which is bound to have done some damage. The only hope now is that the damage wasn't irreversible... "..." As the racer gazes at her, it's difficult to tell if he recognizes her or not, only that he still looks terrified. "I just wanted to stop him from ruining Blurr's mind," Feint explains to the medics. "I didn't ... I didn't expect it to go this far. I didn't know what else to do, I /love him/." All she can do in response is fight her pain, and reach out to Blurr with the same enveloping wave-hug she had done the night before they bonded. "Do you remember me?" she asks softly. "Do you remember who you are?" The panic seems to abate at her softly spoken words, and Blurr nods slowly at the question, though he still looks a bit confused. He shifts uncomfortably, glancing at the clamps still holding him to the device. The medics nod quickly, and the one who had asked the question starts trying to patch Feint's wounds while another undoes the speedster's bindings. "You got pretty shot up yourself...I have to say, what you did...it was really brave..." None of them had ever dared stand up to Axle the way she had. "Please, release him. Please tell me, what was going on in here, no one would answer me, especially not that -monster- lying on the floor," Feint pleads, tired, losing energon. She kisses Blurr on the forehead, and moves away from him, slumping to a seat on the floor. Things feel fuzzy around the edges of her perception. The medic who is working on her keeps doing what he can to stabilize her and fix her up as much as he can. He nods. "Of course, you guys can go, whenever you'd like..." Blurr is now free from the clamps. He moves away from it quickly, rubbing at his wrists where the cuffs had been. The medic sighs at her question. "It's pretty much what Axle said...he's kind of a control freak. He thinks...er, thought, of Blurr as his masterpiece I guess. This was how he could feel completely in control of everything, to make sure his 'masterpiece' never got soiled or...corrupted. By anyone, or anything." "He should have just built a drone," Feint explains tiredly. She tries to look over at Blurr. "...." It occurs to her how deep that compression could have gone. "... Do you remember me, Blurr?" she asks. That answer is more important than anything the medics might be doing to her. If they had ill intent, she'd never see it coming. Well it's a good thing they don't. "I would have to agree with you." The medic shakes his head.. "Guess it'd be hard to get the crowds to worship a drone. Drones don't have story. I can't pretend to understand exactly what went on in his head, though." he shrugs. "You pulled those cables in the middle of the compression process...I'll be honest with you, I'm not really sure what kind of effect it'll have on him." Well, it seems Feint is in luck this time. Blurr does seem to remember her. He puts a hand on her shoulder and squeezes lightly, yet reassuringly. Well, he tried to jam her spark back into her frame, so they're even! Kind of a sorry way to go about it, but at least things have a sliver of a chance of normalcy. "I'm sorry. ... I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt anyone, to get anyone hurt. All I wanted was answers!" the weight of everything that happened comes with Blurr's touch, and she begins to shake. The doctor finishes closing up her wounds. "There, now the rest will be up to your systems to get themselves back to 100%. Just take it easy for a while, okay?" He says, smiling just a little and moving to help the others drag the...dead bodies out of the room. And now it's just she and Blurr, alone in there. The racer just sits down next to her, and holds her close in an attempt to comfort her.